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Late Woodland Period (AD 900–1650)

The Late Woodland Period lasted from AD 900 until 1650. It was a time
when Virginia Indian societies underwent important social and cultural
transformations. It traditionally has been dated from the supposed widespread adoption of
maize agriculture. During this
period scattered populations
consolidated into large
villages and towns, occasionally fortified; they also built burial mounds or ossuaries (large burial
pits) and developed into some of the most socially and politically complex groups on
the Atlantic Coast. The period's end date comes almost five decades after the
establishment in 1607 of the English colony at Jamestown. The new settlement eventually
upended Virginia Indian societies, including the once-powerful Powhatan Indians of
Tsenacomoco. Written records
by John Smith and other English
colonists have helped modern historians reconstruct those early Indian cultures,
especially those on Virginia's Coastal Plain; however, because such records reflect
the writers' European biases, archaeological evidence is critical to a full
understanding of Virginia Indians during this period. This is especially true for
regions west of the Blue Ridge
Mountains, where earlier Indian cultures had vanished by the time English
explorers and colonists had moved this far west. MORE...

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Chronology and Material Culture

The Late Woodland Period is the third and most recent division of the Woodland
Period, which also includes the Early Woodland (1000–400 BC) and Middle Woodland (400 BC–AD 900) periods.
Archaeologists have created classifications of pottery types, or wares, to help them
date Late Woodland sites based on differences in surface treatments or decoration; in
pot size and shape; and on inclusions, or temper—the material added to the clay to
prevent a pot from breaking under heat during manufacture or use. Common tempers
added to Late Woodland ceramics
included crushed stone (quartz, limestone), sand, and crushed shellfish. Although
radiocarbon dating was first used in Virginia in 1957 to date the Kerns site in Clarke County, surprisingly few
radiocarbon dates have been obtained on Late Woodland sites in Virginia. Current
understanding of the variations across time and space for Virginia's Late Woodland
cultures still rests very much on observable differences in their pottery wares.

The range of pottery wares defined as being part of the Late Woodland Period across
Virginia is bewildering, and the relationship between different wares is complex. At
the Keyser Farm site along the
South Fork of the Shenandoah
River, for example, archaeologists have found three major types of pottery
wares: Shepard wares (crushed quartz–tempered), associated with the Montgomery
Complex peoples; Page wares (limestone-tempered), associated with the Mason Island
peoples, traditionally thought to have replaced the Montgomery Complex peoples; and
Keyser wares (shell-tempered), associated with the Luray Complex peoples, who
supposedly supplanted the Mason Island peoples. Recent archaeological investigations
in Maryland, however, indicate that this cultural sequence may not be so
straightforward. The initial inhabitants of Patawomeck, at the Potomac River fall line in Virginia, had
Potomac Creek wares (crushed quartz–tempered) and some archaeologists trace the
site's origins to Montgomery Complex groups who were forced to move downstream.

Another important item of the Late Woodland peoples' material culture was the
triangular arrowhead. The bow and
arrow were actually introduced to Virginia during the Middle Woodland Period
but became increasingly important during the Late Woodland Period, when deer hunting increased
dramatically—especially for presenting deerskins in tribute to chiefs or in trade
with the first Europeans—and when hostilities increased between some Indian
groups. Other important Late Woodland Period artifacts include bone tools (used to
process deerskins), often made from the bones of butchered deer. Beads and other ornaments were made
from bones, shell, or copper and, in some cases, were limited for use by elite
members of society.

Environmental and Physical Setting

Virginia's climate became essentially modern as early as 6,000 years ago, and
Virginia Indians were well acquainted with their environment and its indigenous
resources during the Late Woodland Period. One major global climatic event that
occurred during that period was a phenomenon known as the Little Ice Age, which some researchers date from AD
1400 to 1800. The Little Ice Age caused multiyear droughts—including from 1607 to
1609, when the Jamestown colony was being established.

Geologically, Virginia can be divided into five regions, running from east to west:
Coastal Plain, Piedmont, Blue Ridge, Ridge and Valley, and Appalachian Plateau. The
Coastal Plain is basically an elevated sea floor with low topographic variation. The
types of stones that are most suitable for making stone arrowheads are rare in the
Coastal Plain and, as a result, better quality materials were traded from those
living in the Piedmont or farther west. Saltwater and freshwater rivers, bays, and
marshes provided coastal Indians with plentiful resources, including oysters and other
shellfish. The rich natural resources of the Coastal Plain made this region one of the
more densely populated in Virginia, even before maize agriculture became widespread
here.

The fall line, which separates the Coastal Plain from the Piedmont region, represents
the area where rivers could generally be crossed easily. The Potomac River, for
example, is 100 feet wide at the fall line but more than 10 miles wide where it
empties into the Chesapeake
Bay. Many modern cities (Washington, D.C., Fredericksburg, Richmond, and Petersburg) are located here partly for this reason.
Important Virginia Indian sites were located on the fall line, including Patawomeck
and Powhatan Town. The latter was near or at Powhatan's birthplace long before he
moved to the town of Werowocomoco,
which became the capital of Tsenacomoco.

The Piedmont area extends westward from the fall line to the slope of the Blue Ridge
Mountains. Rivers flowing from east to west in the Piedmont separated Virginia Indian
societies more than was the case for Coastal Plain or Ridge and Valley societies. The
Blue Ridge Mountains vary in width from five to fifty miles and are structurally
related to the Ridge and Valley region. The Ridge and Valley consists of long, narrow
ridges with valleys between them. Notable is the Great Valley, which runs from
Alabama to Quebec. The section of the Great Valley that runs north-south in Virginia
is called the Valley of Virginia, or the Shenandoah Valley. Archaeologists divide the
Great Valley into northern and southern areas at the headwaters of the James River. Limestone is a common
rock in this area and was used by some Indians as pottery temper. Farthest to the
west is the Appalachian Plateau region, only a small portion of which exists in
Virginia.

Settlement Patterns

Indian families living in the Late Woodland Period built two major house types using a framework of
saplings. Single families built and
lived in dome-shaped houses with circular floor plans throughout the Piedmont and
Ridge and Valley regions. Houses with oval to rectangular floor plans but rounded
ends were built on the Coastal Plain and were occupied by multiple families, probably
related along the maternal line. The rounded ends of these longhouses and their
orientation minimized the destructive effects of fierce winter winds. The Jordan's Point site, located in
Prince George County on
the Coastal Plain, had houses with both circular floor plans and more rectangular
floor plans.

At the beginning of the Late Woodland Period, Indian people lived in small family
groups that archaeologists refer to as hamlets. Along the north and south forks of
the Shenandoah River and the Potomac River, as well as in southwestern Virginia,
Indian families joined together to live in compact, planned communities that often
consisted of dome-shaped houses placed in a larger circle around a common plaza.
These ring-shaped settlements were often surrounded by a palisade—a wall of upright wooden
posts. The palisade protected villagers from their enemies and from wild animal
predators such as bears, but also helped give villagers a sense of identity as a
community. Palisaded settlements in Virginia include the Keyser Farm site along the
South Fork of the Shenandoah River, the Patawomeck site at the fall line of the
Potomac River, and the Crab Orchard
site in southwestern Virginia. Palisaded villages seem to date largely after
AD 1200 and many date after AD 1400.

Other villages and towns were not compact or as clearly planned but rather were
"internally dispersed." In these settlements, extended families of six to twenty people
placed their rectangular longhouses near their fields, rather than in close proximity
to one another. The internally dispersed village is typical of Late Woodland sites in
the Coastal Plain, such as at the Jordan's Point site, and this type of settlement
was well documented by early English colonists. Although their houses were spread out
across a fairly broad area, these villagers still recognized that they were part of a
single community.

Economy

A defining element of the Late Woodland economy in Virginia was the introduction of
maize, supposedly around AD 900. The fact that this plant might have been associated
with important religious
ceremonies may have eased its adoption and gave people time to adapt the
plant to their local environments in Virginia. Archaeologists who study plant
remains—called archaeobotanists—have recently found that the earliest direct evidence
for maize is at around AD 1000 from a radiocarbon date at the Arrington site in
southwestern Virginia, a century after the beginning of the Late Woodland Period.
Most radiocarbon dates on maize in Virginia actually fall around AD 1200. Analyses of
human skeletal remains indicate that people living in the Ridge and Valley and the
Piedmont regions ate more maize than those living on the Coastal Plain. Maize
agriculture may not have become important until after AD 1200 or later in Virginia,
but maize was a staple by the time the Europeans first began documenting Virginia
Indians—and was an important part of the tribute paid to such chiefs as Powhatan.

While Indians also grew other crops, such as beans, squash, tobacco, and sunflower, they continued to rely heavily
on locally available wild plants. Wild
rice, wild grapes, an edible root called tuckahoe,
the roots of cattails, and various nuts (acorn, hickory, walnut, and hazelnut) are
among the variety of plants identified at Late Woodland sites. Hunting was also a
critical component of Late Woodland lifestyles. Deer were by far the most widely
hunted animals, and were valued for their meat, skins, bone, antlers, and sinews.
Deerskins were traded widely, given as tribute to chiefs, and were used to make
buckskin clothing and to cover houses. Deer bones and antlers were shaped into tools,
while sinew, or tendon, was used for fastenings and to make glue. Other animals
hunted, trapped, or fished varied by region, but included rabbits, raccoons, black
bears, American elk, beaver, turkey, geese, eagles, hawks, squirrels, sturgeon,
catfish, garfish, yellow perch, and even mountain lions. Coastal Plain groups
collected tremendous quantities of shellfish, such as oysters, from shallow waters.
After removing the meat and drying it for storage, shells were piled in large mounds,
called shell middens, along coastal waterways.

Trade in non-local, sometimes exotic, goods helped link Late Woodland communities
together, spurred competition among different groups that sometimes led to conflict,
and helped chiefs such as Powhatan
expand their political reach. Coastal Plain groups, for example, undoubtedly traded on
occasion with groups in the Piedmont or further west for the hard, high quality
stones needed to make arrowheads. Marine shells were traded from the Atlantic Coast
into interior Virginia and beyond, to be made into beads and pendants. Marine shell
beads have been found in Virginia Indian graves located west of the Blue Ridge.

Deerskins were produced in large quantities for trade at sites like Keyser Farm. Both
Virginia Indians and early European settlers valued deerskins, leading the
Iroquois-speakingSusquehannock to establish a presence on the upper Potomac River—perhaps
forcing the original inhabitants of the North and South Forks of the Shenandoah River
to abandon the area.

Copper was also a prized and rare natural resource during much of the Late Woodland
Period, especially valued by elite members of Virginia's chiefdoms. Before European
traders and colonists arrived in the area, the Monacans may have closely guarded copper sources
west of the Piedmont. Some archaeologists suggest that Powhatan may have tolerated
the English settlement at Jamestown in part because he could obtain copper from the
colonists instead of the Monacans, who were his political enemies.

Social and Political Patterns

When Europeans first landed on the shores of Virginia, they encountered
chiefdom-level societies on the Coastal Plain, whose leaders could command people in
war and who collected goods in tribute, including large quantities of maize and
deerskins. The Powhatan chiefdom was the largest, covering more than 6,000 square
miles in 1607. Powhatan received allegiance and tribute from more than 15,000 people
living in more than 150 villages. The roots of the Powhatan paramount chiefdom
probably date to about a century before Jamestown was established, but the exact
origins of this and other chiefdom-level societies during the Late Woodland Period
are still not well understood. While historical records clearly indicate the presence
of Indian chiefdoms on the Coastal Plain, it is very difficult to find any
archaeological traces of these chiefdoms. This is partly because the elite members of
Virginia's chiefdoms were buried on scaffolds above ground in special buildings, and
such structures often disintegrate over time, leaving few or no archaeological
traces.

Some archaeologists suggest that chiefdoms in Virginia also practiced collective
burials in large pits, called ossuaries, to reduce social tensions among the living.
The deceased person or persons were first placed in a temporary burial area on a
raised scaffold or on the ground, and then, after their flesh decayed, the remains
were brought to the ossuary during a communal ceremony that reaffirmed social ties.
Differences in social status during life were diminished by burial in communal
ossuaries, because the secondary burials revealed no clear social distinctions.
Ossuaries are found on the Coastal Plain and along the Potomac River, especially
after AD 1450. The Patawomeck site contained five ossuaries, one of which contained
the remains of 287 individuals.

Mortuary customs tend to be one of the greatest resources by which archaeologists can
better understand past social groups. The Late Woodland peoples who lived in the
ring-shaped villages of western Virginia were part of largely independent communities
that recognized differences in status based primarily on an individual's achievements
during life, rather than on an inherited social stature. In these ring-shaped
villages, the deceased was usually placed in an individual grave near the village
houses or close to the wall that surrounded the community.

Some Indians were buried in mounds. The Mississippian chiefdoms, located along the
Mississippi River and its tributaries, extended their influence into such remote
regions as far southwestern Virginia. Hundreds of Mississippian burial mounds were
once present throughout the southeastern United States, but most of these mounds have
since been destroyed. One of the few Mississippian mounds still remaining in Virginia
is the Ely Mound in Lee County, which was recently
preserved by the Archaeological Conservancy. The Ely Mound stands almost 20 feet
high, measures 300 feet in circumference, and bears traces of what may have been a
council chamber on its top. Excavations in 1877 uncovered the remains of four
individuals buried with shell beads and pins, and a shell mask or gorget (an
ornamental collar) with a weeping-eye motif.

More than a dozen burial mounds dated between AD 950 and 1450 are recorded in central
Virginia, although they were apparently little used after AD 1350. These mounds
increased in height with each new interment. Some mounds were about twenty feet high and
would have been readily visible on the landscape, perhaps uniting the different
communities that buried their dead there. These mounds held the remains of anywhere
from 100 to 1,000 individuals. They largely represented secondary bundle burials, but
also included cremations and fully articulated skeletal remains. Archaeologists
differ as to the nature of the communities that buried their dead in these mounds.
Some argue that people living in hamlets located at varying distances from the mounds
buried their dead in these structures, while others argue that the mounds were
created by groups living in villages along major rivers, where the land was more
fertile.

Ongoing Research

There is a long history of Late Woodland site excavations in Virginia. Thomas Jefferson famously
excavated a mound near Charlottesville in the 1700s,
concluding that Virginia Indians were responsible for its construction—a view
contrary to what many people believed at that time. Most excavations have taken place during the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries, usually as a partnership between professionally
trained archaeologists, amateur archaeologists, and others with a passion for
Virginia's past.

A team of professional and volunteer archaeologists recently conducted investigations
at the Keyser Farm site, which was first excavated in 1940. The 2003 to 2007
investigations—under the direction of the U.S. Forest Service, Virginia Department of
Historic Resources, and Archeological Society of Virginia—brought new archaeological
techniques to the site, recovering large quantities of plant and animal remains and
obtaining new radiocarbon dates. A significant find was large quantities of small
shell disk beads, some of which had been heated to turn from white to gray, that may
have been worn as necklaces or sewn into clothing as status symbols. Other recent
Late Woodland investigations have taken place at the Patawomeck site, with the goal
of clarifying the origins of the people who built this palisaded village, and at
Werowocomoco, Powhatan's capital when Jamestown was founded.

Scholars have also turned to items that were recovered from previously excavated Late
Woodland sites but are now stored in museums, in order to study them with new
technologies. One form of radiocarbon dating, accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS),
can date very small burned items, such as plant remains, now found in museum
collections. AMS dates have been applied to individual maize kernels and beans,
helping us better understand when Native Americans actually first began to grow these
crops. Archaeologists have also used AMS dating to expand on the very small number
of radiocarbon dates from Late Woodland sites in Virginia, including the Keyser Farm
site. Additional excavations throughout Virginia and further analyses of collections
will help clarify the rich social, political, and economic diversity that
characterized American Indians living in the state during the Late Woodland
Period.

Time Line

900
- Around this date, maize (corn) is introduced to Virginia and possibly becomes associated with Virginia Indian religious ceremonies. Archaeologists use this occasion to mark the beginning of the Late Woodland Period.

1000
- The earliest direct evidence for maize (corn) in Virginia dates to around this year at the Arrington site in Washington County.

1200
- From about this year, during the Late Woodland Period, Virginia Indians begin to live in planned villages, some of which are palisaded. Most towns and villages are located along rivers.

1350
- The earliest direct evidence in Virginia for the purposeful farming of beans dates to around this year at the Bessemer site in Botetourt County.